The
life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who
loved me, and gave Himself for me.
—Galatians 2:20
If we were able to ask Paul, “What is your
part in living life, if you no longer live but Christ lives in you?” he would
answer, “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the
Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” His whole life, day by
day and all day long, was one of unceasing faith in the wonderful Love that had
given itself for him. Faith was the power that possessed and permeated Paul’s
whole being and his every action.
Here we have the simple but full statement of
the secret of the true Christian life. It is not faith that rests only in
certain promises of God or in certain blessings that we receive from Christ. It
is a faith that sees how entirely Christ gives Himself to the soul to be his
entire life and all that that implies for every moment of the day. Just as
continuous breathing is essential to the support of our physical life, so is
the unceasing faith in which the soul trusts Christ and depends on Him to
maintain the life of the Spirit within us. Faith always rests on the infinite
love in which Christ gave Himself wholly for us to be entirely ours and to live
His life over again in us. By virtue of His divine omnipresence, by which
He “fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23), He can be to each what He
is to all—a complete and perfect Savior, an abiding Guest, taking charge and
maintaining our life in us and for us—as if each of us were the only one in
whom He lives. Just as truly as the Father lived in Him and worked in Him all
that He was to work out, so will Christ live and work in each one of us.
When our faith is led and taught by God’s Holy
Spirit, we obtain such a confidence in the omnipotence and omnipresence of
Christ that we carry all day in the depths of our hearts this unbroken
assurance: “He who loved me and gave Himself for me, He lives in me; He is my
life and my all.” “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me” (Philippians
4:13). May God reveal to us the inseparable union between Christ and us, in
which the consciousness of Christ’s presence may become as natural to us as the
consciousness of our existence.
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